Go, Read: Thierry Smolderen On The Origins Of Comics
The comics scholar Thierry Smolderen jumped into a Mark Newgarden thread on The Origins Of Comics and posted a lengthy response to some of the thinking that preceded it, immediately taking the room and boosting the level of conversation that follows. It's worth reading if you like thinking about where comics came from and why.

"The 20th century comic strip is the product of its history, not the reverse, and even if we feel perfectly comfortable with the modern form, we cannot pretend to understand it -- as an historical construct -- without first understanding its history."

That Facebook comments thread is marked as public, and I believe the link takes you to the exact comment, so hopefully that works. It may just take you to the post more generally. My ability to link to Facebook material as marked has certainly been of a mixed quality over the last couple of years.